Li-Fi wireless network using light bulbs breaks the 10GBps barrier

Last week, Chinese scientists disclosed a rather strange way to set up a wireless Internet network using a light bulb and claimed that it can produce data rates as fast as 150 megabits. Now, a joint team from several Scottish universities, Oxford, Cambridge and the Physical Sciences Research Council has smashed that target, reports The Inquirer.

The team of scientists – working on the Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications Project – has achieved 3.5GBps of the three primary colours from a small LED. On combining, it sums up to little over 10GBps using Li-Fi. The modulation process they’ve used is called Orthogonal Frequency Divisional Multiplexing (OFDM). It involves millions of changes in light intensity translated into the zeros and ones of digital communication.

Crosses the 10GBps mark

One of the project leaders, Professor Harald Haas said, “If you think of a shower head separating water out into parallel streams, that's how we can make light behave.” Hass has a decade of experience on processes involving transmission via LED. He has demonstrated the use of the technology to stream HD video to a computer.

The prevalence and availability of light bulbs at homes make this system extremely easy to implement. Moreover, using light instead of radio spectrum will also avoid interference between neighbouring Wi-Fi networks.